This Year, Get Your Head in the Video Game

Most gamers are probably still suffering from a gaming hangover after the barrage of awesome titles in 2007—and 2008 brings no rest for the weary. It looks to deliver even more gaming goodness than the record-breaking year that preceded it. Here are the 10 biggest games coming in 2008:

Super Smash Bros. Brawl — Nintendo is sparing absolutely no expense for Brawl, the latest entry in their party-favorite mascot fighter series that debuted back on the Nintendo 64. Nintendo set up a totally new studio to produce the game, which
promises to jam in as many fan services as Nintendo can possibly fit on a disk—including, finally, online play. Joining the melee are a host of new characters, including non-Nintendo mascots Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid and Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog. Essentially a celebration of everything Nintendo, Brawl should hit store shelves in early March.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII — Though it was released last September in Japan, hype for Square Enix’s prequel to Final Fantasy VII has reached a fever pitch on American shores leading up to its late March release. Critically and commercially successful overseas, Crisis Core puts players in the role of Zack Fair, the mysterious companion of FFVII hero Cloud Strife, in the events leading up to the first game. The game fills in many story details that fans have been debating since FFVII’s original release in 1997, and it does so while still managing to feature compelling gameplay. The game is accessible enough for anyone to pick up a PlayStation Portable and play, but true FFVII fans should be waiting for this game with baited breath.

Wii Fit — Nintendo’s unveiling of Wii Fit last year left everybody a little confused: is it a game or is it some kind of life-improvement software? Turns out it’s a bit of both. Wii Fit will ship with a scale-like balance board that players stand on and use for a range of activities, including real work-out exercises like sit-ups and push-ups, and some additional minigames that revolve around balancing your weight to accomplish some objective. Fun for your grandma and little sister alike, Wii Fit looks to introduce gamers to their abdominal muscles sometime this spring.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots — The epic, 20-year saga of Solid Snake finally draws to a close with director Hideo Kojima’s MGS4. More pressure than ever before is on Kojima to deliver the perfect cinematic, stealth game after it slipped from its 2007 release. All signs point to MGS4 being an absolutely superlative experience—revamped controls, stunning graphics and animation, and cameos by every character ever to have appeared in the Metal Gear universe will make this final episode in the series particularly special. A director known for tearing down the fourth wall, Kojima looks to bend all the rules even further with MGS4, all while including the most refined gameplay the series has ever seen. Expect MGS4 sometime in June on PlayStation 3.

Spore — Even though you probably don’t know what Spore is, you definitely will soon. Spore is the next game from the genius mind of Will Wright, creator of the gigantically-popular PC franchise The Sims. Spore takes everything good about The Sims and just blows it up into a massively-creative and unique experience. It’s probably most easily described as Evolution: The Game. Players create a microorganism and work with it throughout its evolutionary development until it is big enough to compete on the food chain for its species’ survival. The game’s scale is unprecedented, but Spore has struggled with meeting deadlines in the past—this is the year Spore finally debuts on the PC.

Grand Theft Auto IV — GTAIII set the world on fire in 2001 with its risqué plot and mature themes, but its sequels Vice City and San Andreas didn’t do much to advance the edgy formula that made GTAIII such a success. Rockstar Games has promised to change things up for the fourth main iteration on its GTA formula, and the early trailers they’ve shown to the public have been enticing—stealing cars has certainly never looked this good. Though Rockstar plans to invite players back to the seedy underworld of Liberty City sometime in June, expect another delay—GTAIV should enrage censors worldwide sometime this fall.

StarCraft II — Ten years ago, Blizzard Entertainment changed the real-time strategy world with the watershed release of StarCraft, which has since gone on to sell 10 million copies and become something of a sport in South Korea. With its perfect balance, three distinct races, and captivating story, StarCraft was the quintessential PC strategy game. At Blizzard’s Worldwide Starcraft Invitational in South Korea last May, they shocked the world by announcing Starcraft II. Gamers around the world screamed in anticipation as they readied their three-button mice. Zerg rushers, start your engines—StarCraft II should release sometime this year.

LittleBigPlanet — Early last year, Sony garnered some major attention for its do-it-yourself platformer, LittleBigPlanet. Called the YouTube of game design, LBP centers around user-generated content. Players get to make their own side-scrolling levels, upload them to a central server for everyone on the internet to enjoy, and then play them cooperatively with friends. The game’s visual style is endearing and magical—everything looks like a collection of construction paper cutouts, and LBP’s visual style is its trademark. LBP should blast off this fall.

Gran Turismo 5 — The “Real Driving Simulator” makes its debut on the PlayStation 3, and this time players can go online and race against drivers all across the globe. With jaw-dropping graphics and tons of real-world cars, GT5 looks to be the quantum leap from Gran Turismo 3 of which Gran Turismo 4 fell far short. The only question is whether or not developer Polyphony Digital Inc. can really get the game out in 2008—if they can, car fans should make room in their garage for this digital hot rod.

Alan Wake — Xbox 360 gamers looking to fill the void left by Halo 3 in 2008 need look no further than Alan Wake, Microsoft’s big 2008 exclusive from Remedy Entertainment, the developer behind Max Payne. A mystery game with horror elements, Alan Wake places gamers in a huge, open world with miles of terrain to explore. There have been rumblings in the gaming press that Alan Wake is going to really change the way gaming narratives are told. Look for this one in late 2008.